Roastmaster's Blog

Sometimes I pace around the office soliloquizing on the finer details of coffee or on grandiose generalizations about the state of our industry. Mark, usually eyeballs deep into his laptop, stops and watches me amble and ramble, wondering how deep the well of thought might extend, how it might end, and if there is hope interwoven into my usually-troublesome insights. And that’s why I was glad that Mark went with me to Portland last month to attend the annual conference of the Specialty Coffee Association.

The Specialty Coffee Association. That sounds … well it sounds big to me. But when we told the transit cop on the Portland train that we were in town for a coffee conference, he laughed and said he never imagined there would be an entire conference just for coffee. And he’s right, to some extent. There isn’t an entire conference just for coffee because this one seems to pretend to focus on coffee while its manifestations are everything but. The idea that people actually drink and enjoy coffee as a solitary beverage is one I was duped into believing way back in 2002 by the National Coffee Association’s statistics on coffee consumption in the U.S. But once I opened the DoubleShot in 2004, I realized almost no one drinks coffee. The majority of coffee is consumed in a way that masks the actual taste of the beverage. Which I could understand if we were talking about oatmeal. But we’re talking about coffee. Imagine if almost all the whisk(e)y in the world were consumed with Coke. Wait… Is it? (I digress.)

When I first started roasting coffee, it was with a small fluid bed roaster, a bunch of regional coffees (save one: a single estate coffee called La Minita), and a book entitled “Home Coffee Roasting” by a guy named Ken Davids. I read that book and roasted the coffees and made lots of notes, and over time my skills at roasting and tasting began to develop. In 2006, in the midst of the Starbucks saga, I sent Ken Davids a pound of my Ambergris Espresso Blend, as he was reviewing what he probably called “boutique” espresso blends on his website, CoffeeReview.com. This was an exciting time for me, and I was thrilled when Ken rated my espresso 91 points (or was it 92?) and he emailed to tell me that he was glad my coffee turned out to be one of the good ones. Boy was I glad as well; an affirmation from the man whose book launched my roasting career that I was doing it right. And then I noticed on Ken’s website all the coffees that scored higher than mine had logos next to the review which clicked over to the roaster’s website, and all the coffees that scored lower than mine did not. So I emailed Ken and asked him to put my logo on the site. And that’s when I found out the whole thing was a sham. A pay-to-play scheme in which top-rated coffee reviews were bought with “sponsorship” dollars.

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Mark and I went to see Ken speak in a lecture hall at the conference and, still affected 17 years later, I was salivating at the idea of standing up during the Q&A to ask Ken about his shady scoring practices, widely acknowledged throughout the industry but shrouded from unwary consumers. Ken is an affable but awkward old man, and as we watched him stammer around the podium, Mark whispered that this might be his swan song. He talked about a book on coffee he wrote in the ’70s that sold a quarter million copies over the years, the roasting book that got me started, an unheralded book on espresso, and a new book entitled “21st Century Coffee.” Scatterbrained and directionless, he rambled for 45 minutes while I sat sweating and cogitating, but in the end I simply couldn’t attack the poor guy in his last shining moment.

There used to be a waggish monthly I enjoyed, entitled Mountain Bike Magazine. I’ve never been a fan of sitting and looking at pictures or reading descriptions of people doing something I’d rather just be doing, but this magazine was witty and sarcastic and kept me up to date on the latest gear. And then they published an issue with a negative gear review of the latest suspension fork released by the major player in that space. The following issue was thin, and it began with a letter from the editor explaining that the shock company had pulled all its ads because of the low star review. And that was the end of that. So I sort of understand Ken’s dilemma; once you start, you can’t stop.

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There once was a man named Andy. He owned a company in California that roasted coffee, and a local Tulsa shop was using it. A barista of that shop would bring by some beans now and then, and we’d brew and taste and talk about it. Then one day, he brought an Ethiopian natural that blew me away. I went to the website and read all about it. About how they’d bought it “farm direct” in Ethiopia, etc etc. Excited, I emailed Andy to find out how he pulled off the thing I’d been wanting so badly to do. I can’t quite remember what happened after that, but suffice it to say I realized Andy wasn’t being completely honest about that whole “farm direct” part. (Unless, that is, we were ALL buying coffee farm direct.)

Feeling slightly annoyed at the misinformation and deception sprawling throughout specialty coffee, I decided to record an episode of my podcast, AA Cafe, entitled “Liars in the Coffee Industry.” We talked about silly stuff and then got into the heart of the matter. I called out Ken Davids for taking money to give good reviews. (Or was he giving good reviews in order to get sponsorships? No, wait, that’s how “Best in the World” and “A-List” market reviews.) I also talked about Andy and his misleading rhetoric with the Ethiopian coffee and his loosey goosey definition of “farm direct.” And then I got ready for the backlash from dissing one of the most prominent authors in specialty coffee.

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Back in 2005, one of my customers, Joe Holsten, told me I should start a podcast. I’m not sure why he thought this was a good idea, other than the possibility that all podcasts back then were just long-winded rants, which I was prone to brandishing behind the counter anyway. I didn’t even know what a podcast was, and when he explained it I told him no one listens to podcasts. A couple weeks later, Joe came in and told me Apple was about to add podcasts to the iTunes app, and with that AA Cafe was born. We were certainly one of the first coffee podcasts, along with another called portafilter.net, and today we remain the longest-running coffee podcast in existence. Portafilter was run by two specialty coffee pros named Nick and Jay. Nick turned out to be a loudmouth who got himself into trouble for not paying his bills. And Jay – he started out with a shaved-ice business that morphed into “Spro,” then expanded and contracted as Jay’s interests and acumen developed. Jay brought the fruit loops latte to the barista competition around 2007, and then my favorite, the Lobster Bisque Latte. He said it didn’t taste very good, but he was trying to make a point about the hazelnut lattes being presented during the US Barista Championships. And I told him then and there he should be the president of SCA. But they don’t elect people like Jay. He’s too progressive. Anyway, Jay posted about the AA Cafe episode, “Liars in the Coffee Industry” on a message board (remember those?) called coffeed.com. And the shit hit the fan.

But not the way I thought. I was lambasted for talking about one of my peers in the industry. And I even got poorly written emails from uneducated cafe owners. It seemed like the entire industry was dogpiling on me. People were pissed that I had the gall to publicly impugn Andy, a fellow specialty coffee roaster. And no one said a word about Ken Davids. I emailed the moderator of the site to see if they would give me access to post in my defense, but they declined. And that was probably for the best, because eventually Andy appeared in print, doing his best to defend himself and explain the way he bought this coffee “farm direct.” And then the message board fell silent. Someone asked him to please explain again, and it became blatantly obvious Andy had bought this coffee through a broker, no matter how hard he tried to tie himself to an Ethiopian farm he’d never been to. I waited for all the naysayers to send me apologies, but none ever came. (In retrospect, there were so many other things in that podcast episode people should’ve been mad at me for. So inappropriate.)

It was perfect timing, seeing Jay get out of a car and walk down the sidewalk toward the convention center entry. He was holding a camera on a selfie stick, interviewing a Mexican woman who I obviously should know. I posted up, arms crossed, directly in his path. And as soon as he spotted me, he turned the camera around to show this “old school” roaster, Brian Franklin from DoubleShot. We reconnected for a few moments as we strode into the conference hall, and I told him about the Ken Davids lecture. He laughed, as Jay always does, and told me he was enjoying the solitude of having no cafes and being able to roast in his underwear if he wants. And he said he’s trying to be a “YouTuber.” So I guess I’m on YouTube. We parted ways at the bottom of the escalator and Mark and I proceeded onto the trade show floor.

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One of the strangest things about being at the annual expo for the Specialty Coffee Association (of America AND Europe) is the fact that it’s really hard to find a good cup of coffee. There were lots of tropical smoothies and a booth giving away bananas for some reason. We stopped by the Hario booth and saw the new colors of scales and a guy made us a pourover that tasted under-developed on a teal-colored one. I saw baristas behind an espresso machine and looked at their sign to find they were serving caramel pecan lattes or some such thing. We tasted oat milk eggnog (oatnog) and some guy made us try chai tea on nitro. Matcha and whipped cream and “milkadamia.” At meetings with importers, they would ask us, almost dismissively, if we wanted coffee. Longtime friends and brokers confessed to loving coffee with maple syrup, an Australian chai made with honey, coffees flavored with fruits and aged in wine barrels, anything but the taste of actual coffee. Thank god for the staid, sportcoat-clad traditionalists at the La Minita booth. A group that you might call “old school,” that you might’ve deemed sell-outs for being acquired by a Japanese tea company, and that you probably could ridicule for the percentage of coffee they trade in the commercial market. But they seem to be holding the line (and even pushing the envelope, though ever-so-slightly) when it comes to specialty coffee. So at their booth I had a tiny, tiny cup of coffee. Black.

I sauntered over to the coffee stand of one of my brokers, waiting to talk to him, knowing he probably wasn’t looking forward to our conversation. Coffee is hard. And good coffee is dependent on so many things going right. It requires a lot of people caring and doing an excellent job at every level. I’d previously questioned this broker about a coffee he sold me which turned out to have been poorly harvested from a farm not properly managed and then inappropriately milled. And when he finally acknowledged me, he looked as though I’d kicked his dog. “Worst coffee you’ve ever roasted?” Yeah, it’s not good. Whether or not he knows I’m right is still in question, but I’ve been doing this a long time and I know coffee. I probably wouldn’t know if your caramel pecan latte tasted like it should. And I might not know which chai is best. But I know coffee. And I know when people aren’t being honest about things in the coffee industry. Mark stood off to one side, observing the awkward, depressed conversation, and then I felt someone standing next to me. Too close, really. The broker shook this interposer’s hand and then turned back to me and said, “You know Andy, right?”

Yeah, I know Andy. And now Mark does too.

Endurance:  1  the ability to withstand hardship or adversity

especially: the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity

2  the act or instance of enduring or suffering

Endurance has many connotations. Endurance athletes take on great challenges in races that require training to build up stamina through long, repetitive workouts. It’s the ability to endure mental hardships through disease and injury, poverty and distress. Resilience in the face of adversity. Strength in the midst of suffering. I think of the adventurers and explorers of centuries past who developed physical endurance through a life of toil and honed their mental fortitude as they pressed on into the unknown. Some are born with the genetics to endure. Others are bred for it. And some just make a decision to keep going despite the circumstances.

I started camping and hiking when I was in college. One weekend I was preparing to go out in the woods with a friend, gathering my old hand-me-down canvas tent and Coleman sleeping bag, my kerosene lantern and cooking gear. My grandpa was at the house and he was puzzled as to what I was doing. He even seemed a little irritated. And I remember him telling me, “You wouldn’t like it so much if you had to live like that all the time.” And in my youthful ignorance, I shrugged off his comment as irrelevant and obvious.

When I decided to start the DoubleShot, I let go of the comfort and cash that came with my gig as a personal trainer. I left the town that had provided for me because I was restless, bored of the routine, sick of the safety of everyday life. I was enamored with what I knew coffee could be, even though I’d only tasted the tip of the iceberg and would only know the true depth of this industry a decade later. Enamored with coffee and Colorado, I packed my things and began a journey to combine my infatuations. Before long, I was living in my car, sleeping in a tent or on the side of the road somewhere, in a church parking lot, a truck stop alongside eighteen wheelers, someone’s sofa, wherever the sunset chased me down. And that sort of lifestyle set in until it was uncomfortable. All my savings dwindled and work was hard to come by. I remember going to the grocery store, counting the money in my wallet and deciding how many dollars I would save for gas in my car and how much I could spend on fuel for my body. (Ramen noodles, a loaf of white bread, peanut butter and jelly, a couple minutes staring at the meat section, and a quick sniff at the pastry counter, and my $5.00 bill was spent.)

My grandpa lived a hard life, scrambling, clawing, doing what it took to survive. He passed on that lifestyle to my dad, who agreed wholeheartedly that unnecessary discomfort is a luxury. They moved from renthouse to shanty, attempting to farm until the grains that fed the chickens dried up and the monotony of eggs ceased with a chicken dinner. They lived in a partially-finished garage with sheets hung across wires for makeshift rooms separating parents, three girls and two boys. For drinking water they dug a well with shovels, and they put up an outhouse in the back yard. Holes in the roof of the garage allowed my dad, at 10 years old, to star-gaze at night and dream of the endless possibilities outside that life of pauperdom.

Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, the first U.S. astronauts were hired by NASA, Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as our 49th and 50th states, and my dad’s family moved into a house with indoor plumbing for the first time as he began his junior year in high school. It was a pivotal time for the world and for the family. As I would find out over the course of my upbringing, my dad hated hunting and fishing because growing up that’s what he had to do to eat. (Interestingly, my grandpa still enjoyed hunting and fishing; he just didn’t like little kids along for the sport, so I never acquired the skills.)

My dad started his own business when I was 10. He spent his 20s perfecting his trade, adding knowledge and skills to his repertoire, and observing the business behind the office doors. And then he made his big break, taking his career into his own hands. Throughout my upbringing, whether we were broke or not, he never wanted us to go without, to suffer the depredations of poverty, or to appear that we had less than anyone else. He worked his life away making sure he could provide.These were the formative years of my youth.

Fate and foundations found me back in Tulsa at the end of a couple years hardscrabble life on the road. Trial and failure repeated again and again. As you might know, starting a business from nothing is nearly impossible. And then the struggle really begins. I knew at that point I had gone all-in. I had cashed in my chips, dedicated my life, and like the explorers of old, my only option was to carry on. There was no giving up, no going back. I moved into an apartment without gas or electricity, malnourished and tired, just recovered from a near-death experience from carbon monoxide poisoning. Alternatively taking cold showers in winter and sleeping under a blanket of summertime humidity, I persisted for three-and-a-half years like this. Because I knew there must be a way out. Because I knew suffering was a part of it. Because my grandpa and my dad did it before me. This was my heritage.

I started racing when I was just out of college. I was sort of fast and moderately successful. But over time, it became apparent that the longer the race lasted, the better I would do. And so I started doing 24-hour mountain bike races and 36-hour adventure races. And eventually my runs went from 5K to 10K to 26.2 miles and onto 50K, 50 miles, and ultimately 100 miles. Am I a talented runner? No, not by any means. Am I a fast ultra-endurance athlete? Absolutely not. But you see, I quit competing with the field several years ago when I realized the fight was inside me. Today I live in a house with running water, comfortable furniture, and all the normal utilities (I even have WiFi!). I eat meat every day. I’m wealthy by the standards of most people. That daily physical and emotional struggle to survive is gone. And I’m back to some extreme version of my college days; of self-inflicted discomfort.

Four days ago, I completed Ironman Tulsa. And I finished without training for it. It has been my M.O. for the past few years to compete in races without properly training for them. When I was in my 20s, I established goals for my life that hinged around the idea of ultimate freedom: 1) To be in good enough physical condition that I could do anything at the drop of a hat without needing to train, and 2) To be wealthy enough that I could do anything I wanted without regard for cost. I basically accomplished the former in my youth, but had to sacrifice that in order to strive whole-heartedly for the latter. But to me, it’s still important to prove to myself that I can endure. I still want that physical freedom, and though that doesn’t come from a high level of fitness any more, I have built the mental fortitude to carry on, to suffer willingly.

So as not to drown, I started swimming two weeks before the race, and put in 6 solid efforts. I’m a decent cyclist. And I know how to run. So, once I got over the panic that set in for the first five minutes or so in what felt like icy cold water, I felt confident that I would complete the swim. And I did, in a decent time even. Rain pelted us for a lot of the cycling course, but those Osage Hills are my home and I loved every climb. Cramps began to set in toward the end of the bike (calf cramps also set in during the swim, but they went away after I got out of the water and regained my vertical equilibrium). By the time I got off my bike, I couldn’t even pedal in the saddle any more because the muscles in my legs would seize up. This was from poor hydration and lack of training. But with only 26.2 miles to go on foot, I was basically home free. Then my stomach started to hurt, again from poor hydration. I got into my ultra-shuffle and jogged one mile at a time, stopping at every aid station for Gatorade and water. But I wasn’t there yet.

There comes a time during these hard efforts when you’ve gone as hard as you can for as long as you could. And that’s when it gets juicy. It’s hard to get to that point; it takes a long time, and once you get there, you would normally call it a day. So it’s a really remarkable time when you get to commune with suffering and carry on. When you find it in yourself to keep moving despite the road ahead. For me, it could’ve been 8 more miles or 20 more miles because I found that place in my soul where pain and difficulty are signals that I am succeeding. And I wallowed in it, moving forward step by step, forcing my mind to control my body and not vice versa.

A woman on the course said to me, “I just want this to be over,” and my first instinct was to tell her NO, this is why you are here. We worked all day to get to a place where discomfort and exhaustion would make most people quit. This is a special occasion when you are pressing toward a goal and you come to this place not many people know and fewer people go beyond, and you just keep going.

And I get it; I’m pretending to suffer the depredations of exploration and poverty. But you want to know why the DoubleShot is successful? In part, it’s because we’re still going. Never giving up. No matter what.

Today is my 48th birthday. More than twenty years older than when I set off toward this goal. I want to know that my lifestyle today still supports the ability to do what I want physically whenever I please. And I guess that’s why I didn’t train. I just wanted to see if I could.

But as my grandpa said, I wouldn’t like it so much if I had to live like that all the time. And thank God I don’t.

The moon is a blazing orb shrouded by the branches of bent, arthritic oak in the eastern sky. What an amazing spectacle it is as it rises over the treetops to illuminate the night. One of those moons I used to wish for throughout the night of an adventure race; one that freed us from the need for headlamps. The kind of moonlight that made me turn off the headlights of my car and drive by the reflection of the snow on a wintry night in Illinois when I was a foolish teenager. The wispy clouds shine white in the inky sky with pinhole stars scattered sparingly between. 

I’m in the Wichita Mountains, sitting in front of a small, hot fire with the moderate chill of night and chirp of crickets surrounding me. On the three-hour drive here I was drinking our newest coffee, Sircof Venecia Honey. It’s a seriously good cup, tightly wound with pear, chocolate and honeysuckle, but today I noticed a savory nutmeg finish that lingered sweetly like a good Scotch. It’s Autumn and Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching. The season of dusk with the cold night of Winter on its heels. The past two Wednesdays, after the Wednesday Night Ride, I pedaled my bicycle home in the fading light of day. And at the crest of the bike path in Crosbie Heights, overlooking the mellow Arkansas River, above the railroad tracks with the trestle crossing water and a background of oil refinery towers and tanks, the orange light of dusk stopped me in my tracks. The receding, colorful light reflected around a curve in the river, glinting off the water, the color of the embers in my campfire. It’s really amazing to watch the sun set and the sky turn midnight blue. It feels like a miracle. 

This past April I was at Finca Sircof, in the Alajuela region of Costa Rica. As I walked around the farm, visiting with Marco and Maricela Oviedo, it was apparent why this coffee is so good. The farm is small and the milling is primitive, and Marco is a meticulous farmer. His land was clean and organized. The trees were healthy and productive. And he seemed to know each individual coffee tree, having raised them all from seed, nurturing them into fully productive adults. Marco was aware of the fragrances and flowers and fruits throughout his land. He seemed more curator than farmer. But his youthful, weatherbeaten face and calloused hands showed his dedication to the work of farming. The Venecia variety of coffee is a relatively unknown tree, found only in the lands around the Alajuela region. Known for its productivity and uniformity, the variety has a surprisingly tasty profile. Marco grows this coffee, harvests it at the peak of ripeness, and processes it in a way that can be very tricky. He strips away the skins of the coffee cherries and spreads the sticky, mucilage-coated beans on the ground beneath a greenhouse arch. Dried in the sun over the course of twelve days, the coffee develops a sweetness and flavor which enhances the inherent cup of the Venecia coffee. Probably the most technically difficult type of milling, this is a process that’s easy to mess up. But Marco pulls it off spectacularly. And he’s doing it right now. Coffee production, processing, export, and import are time-intensive, so the coffee you are drinking today is the coffee Marco was making a year ago today. It’s a masterful cycle, and I hope you’ll think of his hands in the coffee as you enjoy this cup.

After I visited Marco and Maricela, I took a four hour bus ride to Arenal Volcano to run an 80km race through the rainforest. Running very long distances is one of the things that refreshes my mind and spirit and keeps me sharp and able to do what I do every day. It’s the simplicity of running and the grueling determination required that steels my resolve and enlivens a spirit of new possibilities. 

This race was particularly inspirational and as I ran into the approaching night, with a flashlight on it’s last leg, I grasped a sense of ultimate freedom. Like this full moon loosing itself from the thorny grasp of the silhouetted trees to soar into the lightly veiled sky. Autumn holds that freedom. Released from the grip of Oklahoma’s oppressive summertime heat, we bask in the campfire smoke and the fragrances of the season, the chill air, the turning leaves, and the rich flavors, which are perfectly delivered in a cup of Sircof Venecia Honey.

In the early days of the DoubleShot, when we were just beginning to understand the magic that Ethiopia brings to coffee, an interesting story opened up to me that brought that world from across the sea right home to Oklahoma. 

Two greying men met at the DoubleShot a couple of days per week. They would sit at ease and drink our drip coffee and leisurely converse. If you wandered near their table at any point you might hear them discussing politics or current events or some philosophical point of which they’d plenty of time to ponder. The discourse was one monologue with plenty of air between words, unhurried and immersive, followed by the other rebutting or augmenting the previous assertions. And this would go on until they figured they should mosey on to who-knows-where.  It reminded me of the coffee breaks my grandpa would take in the afternoons, meeting daily at Hy-Vee’s grocery cafe or Hardee’s restaurant, seemingly unplanned yet unsurprised to see his buddies.

One day, one of these older gentlemen came to me with unusual and mysterious items in hand. He told me he had been a professor at OSU and taught in Ethiopia for a few years.  He handed me a primitive wooden mortar approximately one-foot tall, which he said was “an Ethiopian coffee grinder.”  I envisioned a woman roasting coffee beans in an iron bowl over a small mound of coals and then pulverizing them in this hollowed-out log.  Ethiopia is one of the only countries who maintain a custom of drinking the coffee they produce. Most coffee-producing countries export their entire crop and leave the coffee drinking for Nescafe.  Ethiopians have a lengthy, unhurried coffee ceremony that my grandpa would appreciate. They take fresh roasted coffee to the extreme, much like I did in the beginning of my roasting exercises - pouring coffee from roaster to grinder to brewer to cup, all within minutes.  Coffee is indigenous to Ethiopia.  And after the storied discovery of coffee’s restorative powers, the development of its consumption moved from eating the cherries to consuming the raw seeds mixed with animal fat, to drinking wine from the fruit pulp.  And who devised the amazing plan of roasting its seeds and extracting their goodness with water?  No one really knows. But though the consumption of coffee had evolved, the cultivation and processing of coffee had remained a wild, anecdotally-driven avocation in Ethiopia for centuries. 

In August 1952 a group of six Oklahoma A&M (now OSU) staff members arrived in Ethiopia in order to determine a suitable site for The Imperial Ethiopian College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts.  At that time a survey had been done and it failed to find a single Ethiopian national with the equivalent of a B.S. degree in any phase of agriculture.  OSU had commenced the construction of an agriculture school in Ethiopia with funding from USAID.  With the assistance of the Emperor Haile Selassie (hereafter referred to simply as “King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Emperor of Ethiopia” or alternatively, “His Imperial Majesty”) the school was located in the famous coffee-growing region of Harrar, with a junior college in Kaffa and one near the capital city of Addis Ababa. The goal of this project was to teach Ethiopians about the scientific and industrial progress in agriculture, and to educate enough Ethiopians to take over the administration of these institutions as soon as possible.  The main focus of the college was on food farming and coffee cultivation.  OSU operated in Ethiopia from 1952-1968, when there were enough nationals to fill the staff.  During that time 384 people graduated, most becoming ministers of Agriculture and Education.  And 136 students went on to pursue advanced degrees in the United States before returning to teach at the college or work in the Ethiopian government.

The professor who gave me the mortar for crushing coffee also gave me an elaborate charcoal drawing of one of Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guards, or Kebur Zebagya.  He told me one of his Ethiopian students drew this and gave it to him.  The drawing is signed "Kiros Woldu" and dated ’65.  I love this piece of art and it hangs on the brick wall behind my roaster.  It’s a reminder of our connection with Ethiopian coffee farmers through OSU and the professor who spent so many days chatting at our tables. 

Bekele Dukale lives in the Gedeb region of Ethiopia.  He owns a farm that is about 5 hectares in size, which is the equivalent of 12 acres or the size of 10 football fields. That’s a pretty big farm in Ethiopia. Bekele grows coffee and sells it to a mill called the Worka Cooperative. This is a place that buys coffee cherries and dries them, and then processes the coffee to be sold through the Ethiopian Coffee Exchange or through a private exporter. Bekele has enough land and is producing a high enough quality for the mill to separate his coffee into a micro-lot.  This is fairly unusual for Ethiopia.  

Gedeb is southeast of the Yirgacheffe region, which is well-regarded as producing the best coffees in the world.  The reasons for this are likely the high elevation, the microclimates, and the age-old heirloom varieties of coffee that are growing in the area. Though Gedeb is designated as a separate region, it is home to some of the same types of coffees, and is supposedly the highest place in the country where coffee is cultivated.  

Coffees are graded for export.  Each coffee-producing country has different grading practices and designations, some based on bean size, others on its elevation, etc.  In Ethiopia, coffees are graded 1-9 based on visual inspection for defects and on cup quality. Up until just a couple of years ago, a grade 1 Natural was unheard-of.  And it’s still a very stringent designation because the natural variance in dry-processed coffee beans is something that must be minimized by careful harvesting, hand sorting, and meticulous milling.  

This year I bought coffee that was grown by Bekele Dukale.  I’ve never been to Ethiopia, nor have I met Bekele.  I bought the coffee from my friend Peter at Royal Coffee, which is a specialty broker in Oakland.  This coffee is a grade 1 natural, 100% grown by Bekele Dukale in Gedeb, and dry processed at the Worka Cooperative.  This is one of the holiday coffees we are offering this year to help you celebrate with family and friends, at home by yourself in front of the fireplace with a good book, or with someone special.  The coffee roasts beautifully.  It is consistent and even in color.  In the cup, it has a very soft mouthfeel with lots of dark chocolate and cinnamon.  Notes of pear and strawberry peak through, not in an invasive way, but just to tickle your more extravagant sensibilities.  I love it and I know you will too.  Our pastry chef, Curtis, developed a beautiful and simple food pairing for this coffee, based on a rustic French dish called clafoutis (apparently pronounced claw-foo-tee’).  Buy a pound at the DoubleShot or online and we’ll send you the recipe card with instructions and a mouth-watering picture.  

I can’t consume any dairy, so clafoutis is out of the question, but my friend Mark Brown suggested another pairing for Bekele’s coffee, and it’s one I am really enjoying. From Mark’s food publication, argentfork:

chocolate pear crumble

I tossed one of these together for some

friends last month who barely saved me

any. I did one similar for the woman who

taught us French when we were in France.

She said, “Mark … c’est incroyable.” And it

was. Butter the bottom of a baking dish big

enough to accommodate your pears. Half or

slice or chunk the fruit—it must be ripe—and

lay over it the best chocolate you can afford.

About 4 ounces. Top that with a mixture

of flour, butter and sugar, and maybe even

a little cornmeal for bite. Any old crumble

pastry will do. Bake until golden.

On June 18, 1954, the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie came to Oklahoma to visit OSU (then known as Oklahoma A&M College). He was visiting in order to show his appreciation for the initiative that the president of Oklahoma A&M College had taken to reach out to his country to develop an international program for educational aid.  The colleges that OSU set up in Ethiopia were the first in a new program called the Point Four Program, announced by Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address in 1949.  The Emperor’s visit was apparently quite a society event, and 300 of the “elites” of Oklahoma were invited to a formal dinner. Afterward, His Imperial Majesty stood in a reception line for an hour and forty minutes shaking hands and greeting 1,600 people.  

Two things stick in my mind about the Ethiopian Emperor’s visit.  First, Haile Selassie had requested, while in Oklahoma, to meet an Indian. So upon his arrival he was greeted by a well-known native american named Acee Blue Eagle, who was in traditional dress, and he presented the Emperor with an Indian war bonnet.  And second, after the formal dinner, Oklahoma Governor Johnston Murray gave a welcoming speech, during which he bungled the pronunciation of Ethiopia, calling it “Oklamopia.”

I searched the list of college graduates during OSU’s time in Ethiopia, but I didn’t find the name Bekele Dukale. No surprise, because the graduates seemed to be from the wealthier families of Ethiopia, emerging into teaching and governing jobs, or if into private farming, it was generally a large enterprise.  But the advancements made in farming technologies and education of farming methods, experiments with varieties and processes, and the general imprint made on the culture of coffee farming in Ethiopia by the schools from the OSU/USAID program were wide-reaching.  It is because of this dissemination of information and practical knowledge that a man like Bekele Dukale could learn to produce the highest quality of coffee from the finest coffee-producing region in the world. It’s a testament to the foresight in the 1950s by a handful of leaders in Oklahoma and Ethiopia that today one of the best coffees in the world was grown in Ethiopia, and is being roasted, brewed and enjoyed in Oklahoma. For that, we show our gratitude.  So why not call it “Oklamopia”?

Our Ethiopian coffee from Bekele Dukale is available for a limited time at the DoubleShot and online. We are selling it in special one-pound bags with an info card attached and our clafoutis recipe card.

The pin-pricks of coffee’s tiny guardian mosquitos remind me that in the dense, diminutive forest of it’s mountainsides I am a guest, and its harvesters are armored with long sleeves and t-shirts around their heads appearing like so many muslim women, faces protruding from a habit of Hanes.  Like soldiers waiting to be called upon to defend the coffee.  I skirt amongst outstretched branches, a turnstile of spindly sticks and corrugated leaves, the smallest of which have a thick, rubbery texture that seem to transmit to me the health and wellbeing of the plant when I caress its surfaces as one in love.

They ask me why I touch the leaves that way.

I like to feel them.

They ask if I have children.

The coffee trees are my children.

They say I have a lot of children.

I love coffee.  It’s fruit is a life-force I pluck with earnestness and purpose.  I select the ripe cherries intently and pop them in my mouth for a chew on the fibrous skin and I tuck the twin seeds in my cheek to taste its slimy fructose-covered shell, like a chipmunk storing up for winter.  Or I pop them in my blue jeans pocket, filling with seeds of the Maragogipe or cherry of the Yellow Caturra.  Amongst millions of trees, each bearing over a thousand cherries, they ask why I put several in my pockets.

These are magical beans.

They think I am crazy.

I look into the eyes of the coffee picker and I ask her name and she says Claudia.  She tells me she is thirty years old.  I ask her how long she has been picking coffee and she tells me, “All of my life.”  I tell her she is beautiful.

I examine the strong yet delicate hands of the farmer whose skin is creased with a lifeline that parallels the family tree of his coffee.  The sticky stains of coffee juice show upon his clothes and the knowing way he manages the harvest.

And the processing of our coffee crisscrosses cultures and interweaves several centuries of rudimentary practices.  I ask, when was the contemporary machine invented that removes the skins of the cherry and which is so pervasive across the coffee washing stations throughout the world.  They tell me around 1650, when the Dutch took coffee from the arid mountains of Yemen and planted it in the island rainforests of Indonesia.  An enduring method and machine, invented of necessity by interlopers.

The history of the process is the history of the cup.  From the port of Mocha in Yemen to Java, Indonesia, the world’s oldest blend was born.  The traditional dry process of Yemen and Ethiopia yields distinctly different flavors than the wet process that enabled coffee cultivation to be spread throughout the world.  The colors and fragrances of these unroasted, processed coffees trickle through my fingers  and into my nose as I sift through my burlap meditation garden.

Coffee is the history of bondage and freedom.  Of the slavery once predominant in plantations of French and English and Dutch colonies and of the uprising of the suppressed.  In roasting coffee, as the color changes from green to straw to tan and the aromas evolve, the coffee is absorbing the heat from its environment in the roasting drum.  But at a certain time and temperature in the cycle, our coffee begins to rise up exothermically, audibly snapping and releasing energy in a vibrant celebration of life and liberty.

I snoop around a coffee mill and I feel the tears in the plastic mesh flooring of a raised bed built for a special project of naturals just for me.  A European roaster inquires curiously but conservatively, and I ask if he is interested in the natural.

NO, he snaps.

They tell me someday my palate will mature and I won’t like those coffees any more.

I think, maybe my respect for mankind will mature someday and I won’t like freedom or diversity any more.  And I’ll take my elite cupping spoon to Costa Rica to subdue the coffees under one standard profile.  Should we not question the status quo and ride away in container ships back to San Francisco, our bland, unwavering coffees barely allowed to reach that exothermic crack before being put down, hushed.

In Costa Rica, coffee transformed from ornamental garden plant into the chief export in the mid-1800s.  

Seeing a weakness in the recently-independent states of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, a privateer named William Walker gathered a small army and set sail from San Francisco to make slave states of those emerging countries.  His success in Nicaragua was quelled by an uprising of meager but impassioned farmers from the rolling countryside of northern Costa Rica.  The impromptu civil defense drove the pirates back into Nicaragua, trapped in a hostel in the town of Rivas.  One young farm boy-turned-drummer boy from the town of Alajuela charged the hostel and set fire to its foundations, laying waste to the fortress and sending Walker and his cohorts fleeing to Honduras where they were summarily executed by firing squad.

Inspired by the young Alajuelan, Juan Santamaria, whose nickname was El Erizo, we pay homage to his bravery and forthrightness.  Our first special coffee for this holiday season, El Erizo, is a departure from the pent-up standards espoused by San Franciscans, where they roast only washed coffees and only until they begin to hear the coffee cry out, whereas the voices of the past make them nervous and the emerging uniqueness of flavors, of freedom, are dismissed, enslaved.  And we burn down those walls and release the sweetness and amazing flavors within the coffee, within the farm boy who planted and picked the coffee.  With Thanksgiving we offer this rare treat - a Honey Process from Alajuela that tastes, in all my experience, like a beautiful natural.

They ask me why I love the coffee.

It personifies freedom.

The DoubleShot has been pretty busy over the past few months.  We’ve been steadily making changes to accommodate more customers, to serve you more efficiently and help you with more questions about coffee drinks, coffee beans, and coffee equipment.  Our pastry chef has been in the kitchen churning out the most delicious muffins and scones in town.  It’s exciting to see so many new faces, and friends who have been coming every day for years, on this path of discovery and experimentation to find out how to make a better cup of coffee.

Last month I spent a few days in Nicaragua.  It was my first trip there and I went in not knowing where I would be or who I would meet.  My goal was to make the most of every day and learn as much about the local culture and the people as possible.  To begin to understand how farms of different sizes operate.  How they plant and fertilize and pick and process and sell their coffee.  What varieties do they grow?  How do the mills operate and what is the structure to get the coffee from the farm to the mill?  So many questions, because everywhere I go, things are different.  People often ask me if I go to the farm and buy the coffee.  No, that’s not what it’s about for me.

The DoubleShot is a subculture that embraces quality and curiosity.  In coffee, and in business in general, we are an outlier.  There is a tendency for people to see companies that appear successful and want to emulate what they do.  And in fact, there is an entire business philosophy about imitating the behaviors and decision-making of role models in order to achieve a similar modicum of success.  But that’s not what we do.  That’s not what the DoubleShot is founded on and not how we make decisions.  Yes, we do research and try to keep up with the latest trends and ideas and science in coffee, but we do so with a skeptical eye.  We learn and we question what we learn and we test ideas to see how they play out with our coffee.  We brainstorm a lot and look for problems so that we can come up with solutions that could change the entire course of brewing or drinking coffee.  To me, it’s not about copying or trying to reach some golden standard set out by some bland corporate association.  We WANT to be an outlier.  Copy copy copy and no one will ever find something different or better.  Standardization is a slow death.

Progress happens very slowly around here.  If you could hear us in the back and in our private meetings, discussing the ways in which we are going to make coffee on Mars or our invention for new ways of turning whole bean coffee into coffee particles in order to brew, you’d think we were re-inventing the wheel - a martian wheel, at that.  And we might!  Why wheels?  Why hinges?  Hinges are the starbucks of the movement world!  But I digress.  It’s big ideas that turn into small changes.  Many of the inventions we’ve created you will never see because they don’t make great coffee.  Failure is very exciting around here because we do it with a lot of flare and illumination of new possibilities.  [You should’ve seen my black cat (the firecracker, not the espresso blend) coffee bean smasher.]

How do you drink your coffee?  We just finished an experiment in which we asked you to drink a single-origin espresso while listening to a sound and staring at an image.  Each of seven days we pulled shots of the same coffee (Brazil Daterra Peaberry Pearl) and switched up the sound and image.  The idea for this comes from the myriad of studies on the effects of our senses on the complete experience.  Indeed, we have been fiddling with this idea, though a bit more subtly, over the past few years as we’ve sold box sets of coffee and particularly-shaped cups, and asked you to listen to a certain song as you drank the coffee at home, or paired the coffee with a story or a food of texture and taste that would transform your drinking experience.  The results of our latest foray were interesting and poetic and sparked your general appreciation for letting go of the present and the particular and allowing your minds to wander through the prairies of aroma and primal thought.  The responses were fantastic.  And we will learn and further mold our presentation of coffee to make your experiences more wonderful.

Why should I care how they grow coffee in Nicaragua?  My desire to know more about the details of coffee from the ground up is all about cause and effect.  What makes coffee taste good?  What makes coffee taste bad?  What makes it taste fruity?  What makes it taste chocolatey?  And who are these people that toil in the tropical mountains, supplying the grains that feed our commodity markets?  Most of the coffee we drink at the DoubleShot comes to us through one of a few small brokers with whom I’ve developed a nice working relationship.  I love working with these people, as they’ve really acquired a sense for the types of coffee we enjoy, and they take a lot of the preliminary guess-work and risk out of purchasing.  Much can go wrong from farm-level to your kitchen table, and brokers take that risk out of my hands, helping us more consistently bring you great coffees.  But sometimes I do make deals with farmers and arrange to buy coffee of a particular type from a particular farmer, as you know.  And when that happens, I don’t put it on my mule and wander up through the Darien Gap with the booty.  It’s the job of millers and exporters and shippers and importers and freight carriers to get coffee from there to here - much of that being beyond my understanding.  So I leave the technical work to the technicians and stick to what I know - roasting and brewing.  You’re welcome.

This weekend is Tulsa Tough.  You may have never heard of it, but it’s sort of a big deal.  Pro and amateur cyclists come from all around the country to ride and race in three days of high-speed criterium circuits.  Three courses in and near downtown are set up on short loops in which the peloton trickles around corners and motors straight-aways like a freight train.  It’s inspiring to see elite athletes do what they do best.  One of those athletes is a guy named Doug Zell.  Doug is the founder and CEO of Intelligentsia Coffee, which is the leading company in the specialty coffee industry.  Intelligentsia has been very successful over the years, spearheading new ideas in coffee, and opening cafes in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.  Intelli is the company that many emulate, but as I’ve always said, if you’re doing what Intelligentsia is doing, it’s too late - they already did it.  They are a leader.  An outlier like us, except the rest of the industry follows them.  While Doug is coming to Tulsa to race his bike with the Intelligentsia cycling team, he will be spending some time hanging out drinking coffee at the DoubleShot, and has agreed to be our guest speaker on Saturday morning.  From 10-11a Doug will talk about his company and about coffee.  This is an outstanding opportunity to hear from someone who has been doing this for 20 years.  So I hope we will pack the house and give him the DoubleShot welcome he deserves.

As spring turns to summer, look for more innovations here at the DoubleShot.  I predict that the remainder of 2015 will find us with more enjoyable and unexpected coffees and ways of drinking coffee.  We will see new Colombian coffees and likely a very exciting crop from Nicaragua.  More experiments and strange occurrences are almost guaranteed.  And a new type of coffee brewer will likely be born in the DoubleShot Coffee Laboratory.  We shall not be bored.

Put this on your calendar:

Doug Zell, Intelligentsia Coffee

Saturday, June 13 from 10-11a

at DoubleShot Coffee Company

“How did you get into coffee?”, people ask me.  It’s kind of a long story. 

I was riding my bike down Riverside Drive, on the river trail, for what felt like the millionth time, and my mind sort of hit this pothole and it was deep and red and depressing, and I felt like I couldn’t ride that path any more.  

I started out, like everyone else, sipping the last, cold remnant of Folgers out of my parents’ squat, heavy, ceramic cups.  I can still remember the taste.  And the smell.  But it wasn’t until I was a big boy that I started actually drinking coffee.  It occurred to me one day, and I distinctly remember this, that I was completely independent and that I could do anything I wanted.  Anything.  (Not true, but an enticing thought nonetheless.)  That feeling of freedom was liberating.  I had freedom and responsibility.  I had my own apartment, all by myself, and I was responsible for paying the bills.  I owned my own business and was responsible for making the money to pay those bills.  With freedom comes diversity.  Decision-making.  Discovery.  I did all sorts of things and tried all sorts of coffee.  And I learned that coffee tasted better without sugar.  I found out that french press was a good way to brew coffee.  But not with a blade grinder.  I made “espresso” and pourover coffee, and moka pot.  And then one day, much to my surprise, I learned that coffee didn’t have to come to me already roasted.  It didn’t have to be roasted in a factory or in a large, industrial roaster.  I could buy a very small coffee roaster and learn how to do it myself.  

I’ve told this story over and over again through the years, and you’ve probably heard it before, but it’s the core of the very beginning and the true essence of the DoubleShot.  I bought a small home roaster and various green coffees, and I read a book about coffee and roasting.  I roasted and brewed and tasted coffee for the first time.  The explosion of flavors in my mouth was startling.  I wasn’t sure what to think, but I knew coffee had changed forever for me.  It was the first time in my life that I’d ever tasted coffee that wasn’t stale.  And thus, the foundations of DoubleShot Coffee Company were conceived.  After a few years roasting in my apartment kitchen and riding my bike down the river trail, I decided to strike out, take my bike and roaster to Colorado, and open a coffeeshop in the Rocky Mountains.  To share fresh, delicious coffee with the masses!

As you know, that didn’t work out.  And after two years slumming it in pristine mountain country, I returned to Tulsa, where this taste for fine beverage began.  

There are endless details to this excursion:  trials, hurdles, victories, mistakes, discoveries, everything.  Just about anything I can imagine; it’s happened here at the DoubleShot.  I remember some things, and a lot I don’t.  

The beginning of life in this long, skinny strip mall space at 18th and Boston was difficult.  I was younger and much fitter and so I guess I had a lot more energy to work more and still play a little in the night.  Everything I had went into the creation of this concept, and so each night I would go home to an apartment that was really more a storage unit for my sleeping body.  For three-and-a-half years I lived without gas or electricity in a run-down habitation, in order to skimp on the bills.  And truthfully, it’s likely the DoubleShot wouldn’t have made it with that extra burden.  And so I suffered for my craft.  It was cold in winter and hot in summer, and the shower was always a little warmer or cooler than the air.  And then one day I upgraded, beneath the smog of mold-infested lungs.  My lungs!  Possibly my biggest asset, my lungs have carried me far throughout my life.  And taken the biggest punishment.

One December day, as I find myself every December now, I decided I was fat and out of shape, and I needed to do something drastic.  So I signed up for an ultra-marathon.  My first one.  I started taking one day off on the weekends and I implemented a training regimen that was based on 9’s.  I’d run 9 miles the first weekend.  Then 18 miles the next.  27 miles the next, and so on until I got to a distance that was unrealistic.  I finished that first 100, but it took a lot of caffeine and perseverance.  (They don’t call it “running a business” for nothing.)

Running has been a parallel to life for me, ever since I realized the liberation that running gave me.  Just like in life, you can’t choose your natural ability, but you can decide the effort you put in and your willingness to persevere.  And, as I’ve coached aspiring entrepreneurs through the years, it’s that unwillingness to quit that makes all the difference.  My high school football coach, Chris Stiles, used to say, “Men,” (he was the first person in our lives to call us men)… “Men, we’re all going to face adversity, but you have to keep on giving 110%.  You’re going to get knocked down, but you have to get right back up.”  He was right, and I’ve tried to live some version of that doctrine.

As I reminisce about the history of the DoubleShot, there are two times in my life that I can’t really remember.  For ten months, I worked the DoubleShot all by myself.  With no employees, I barista’d all day and then roasted and ran the business (poorly) at night.  I was sleeping ~5 hours per night, sometimes lying down on the floor by the sink or napping on the sofa when I was just too exhausted to finish the dishes.  And I was exhausted, fighting TMJ and sleep deprivation.  But that was one turning-point in the life of the DoubleShot.  I proved I could go it alone, found some extremely supportive friends, and made a statement about how important it is that coffee quality be foremost at the DoubleShot.  But, like I said, most of that time is a blur.  I was a robot.  An exhausted robot.

Most people don’t know this, but the DoubleShot almost didn’t come into existence, because I came near to death just a couple months prior to its opening.  I was staying with my parents in their new house, and my dad was working in Chicago.  My mom went to visit him, and while she was gone, I began to feel sick.  After a couple days, I woke up early in the morning and realized I was about to die.  So I went to put the dishes away, so my mom wouldn’t find the dishwasher full when she got home.  (I didn’t want to be remembered for that.)  But I couldn’t do it.  So I sat down to think.  And it occurred to me that I had carbon monoxide poisoning.  I can’t remember all the details, but I remember driving to Lowe’s with terrible tunnel vision to buy a carbon monoxide detector.  I remember the look on my mom’s face when I picked her up at the airport.  I remember not being able to stand any more because lactic acid had built up in every muscle in my body.  I remember the doctor telling me I should be dead.  And that I also had the flu and meningitis.  And I remember the pain.  But I survived.

And so did the DoubleShot.  It has survived the downturned economy, employee turnover, crazy neighbors, debilitating thefts, a car through the window, threats from Starbucks, twitter, myriad disappointments and failures, and the tragic loss of a few friends.  And it has continuously grown, and seen even more daily successes.  We’ve developed new coffees and relationships in Colombia, and seen the real face of coffee in many farms throughout Central and South America.  We’ve doubled the size of our store, employed professional bakers, and trained the most talented and passionate baristas around.  We’ve been featured in a documentary (The Perfect Cappuccino) and a story in Wine Spectator, and inspired an episode of Portlandia.  (We even got to serve coffee to Kevin Bacon.)  And we’ve seen the delighted faces of countless customers throughout the years who experienced that same amazement I felt all those years ago after my first home roast, my first taste of fresh coffee.  And that was the goal.  So for all of you who enjoy our coffee and appreciate the effort we put in to always make it fresh and delicious, we count each of you as part of our success over the past 10 years.  Thank you.

This week, we will be celebrating with a few delicious coffees.  Online, we are offering The Decade Collection, a set of 3 coffees that I think encapsulates the DoubleShot at 10 years old.  You can buy that set here starting at midnight on the morning of our birthday.  Mark Brown and I discussed the Decade Collection and what it means to be 10 on our podcast, AA Cafe #87.  In-store on this Wednesday, we will institute a new brewing method for the DoubleShot.  And in that brew, we will be drinking the new Ethiopian natural, Beloya, as well as the amazing Perci Red - a natural Gesha, and probably the most interesting coffee we’ve ever sold.  Perci Red, as you’ll remember, is from Ninety Plus Gesha Estates in Panama.  

The first time I visited Panama, I walked up the mountain at NPGE, skirted by tall, thin Gesha trees, and at the top, where the rainforest crested the other side of the mountain, I waded through tall grass into what seemed like a paradisiacal scene.  Valleys swept away all around, hawks floated on mountain breezes, wild flowers colored the otherwise-green landscape, and trees laden with huge, ripe, orange fruit guarded the entrance to this eden.  These oranges enticed my palate, and so I plucked and peeled one bright, textured orb.  And upon biting into the first dripping slice, I was shocked.  Absolutely shocked.  As this was the most sour thing I’d ever tasted.  It turned out not to be an orange, but some sort of orange-looking lemon.  But this is as it should be with life and with coffee.  The unexpected is what makes it exciting and memorable.  You think you know what coffee tastes like until that one day you taste fresh, DoubleShot Coffee.  

And the story continues.

Celebrate with us Wednesday, March 5 with amazing coffees all day and a party from 7-9p that evening.

What a wonderful gift of coffee Ethiopia has bestowed upon us during the past month.  From Kemgin to Nekisse and now onto the so-smooth Tchembe, we’ve definitely been enjoying the best coffees on the planet right here at the DoubleShot.

As promised, I want to publish a couple of recipes for the suggested food pairings with Tchembe.  The apricot-strawberry crisp is just a huge compliment to the natural flavors present in the Tchembe, and all of that combines to make for a harmonious duet.  Great choice for dessert, when coffee is a must, but I also love to eat fruit crisp for breakfast.  The second pairing is my girlfriend, Julie’s french toast.  I’ve never been very good at making french toast, but it’s my favorite breakfast.  Pair it with my favorite coffee, and I’m set.  Check it out. 

Strawberry Apricot Crisp

½ c. hazelnuts
½ c. rolled oats
1/8 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. cold, salted butter, cut into chunks (cold coconut oil works well, too)
1/3 c. honey (or maple syrup)
6 apricots, pitted and quartered
8 oz. strawberries, hulled and quartered

Preheat oven to 400°.  To make the crisp topping, combine the hazelnuts with 1-2 tbsp. of the oats in a food processor and process until they reach the consistency of coarse flour.  Keep an eye on it to make sure you don’t process it into a paste.  Add the remaining oats, salt, cold butter, and honey, and pulse just until a chunky mixture forms.  Combine the quartered apricots and strawberries in a baking dish large enough to hold them in a thick layer.  Drop spoonfuls of the topping evenly over the fruit.  Bake until the fruit is bubbling and the topping has browned, about 30 minutes.   (Recipe from food52.com)

Julie’s French Toast

Preheat the skillet with tons of butter.  If you have a cast iron skillet, that’s the way to go.  If you don’t have one, you should go buy one.  Use one egg per slice of bread.  Julie insists on challah, which is an egg bread, and we also love Whole Foods Birdland multi-seed bread.  Add a splash of milk to the eggs.  Beat the eggs and milk together for about one minute.  Soak the bread until saturated.  Flip it over and soak it on the other side until saturated also.  Cook until golden brown on both sides and cooked through.  Use real maple syrup, heated for just a few seconds in the microwave.

Gifts

With Christmas less than one week away, we’re making sure to keep our supplies up so you don’t get stuck without coffee or some other important coffee supply you need.  If you’re scrambling to figure out what gifts to buy for the people on your list, I’m here to help.  This is my annual list of top coffee gifts.  This year I’m breaking it down into top 5 gifts for local patrons and top 5 gifts for online customers.  

Top 5 Coffee Gifts for Local DoubleShot Customers

5. DoubleShot Gift Card.  Have you seen the new gift cards?  Stylish.  Do you want to look cool?  Then you should probably give a stylish gift card for the tastiest coffee place in town.

4. Thermos Stainless Steel Travel Tumbler.  Sometimes you just don’t know if people drink coffee (what kind of friends do you have?!) or tea or maybe just sip on some hot water with a little lemon squeezed into it because it makes their voice sound real nice.  With this gift, it doesn’t matter.  They can put whatever they want in it.  They’d be smart to put DoubleShot Coffee in it, but hey, you’re the one who chose these “friends.”  Anyway, once they start using the cup and see how amazing it works to keep the hot beverage hot and sealed up, they’ll think you’re a genius.  And you basically are.

3. Baratza Virtuoso Grinder.  This is what I would like to have.  I’m still using the Baratza Maestro Plus, which is a great grinder, don’t get me wrong,  But the Virtuoso has a nice brushed zinc exterior and a heavy duty motor and burrs that grind coffee twice as fast as mine.  So if I were married, and I wasn’t sure what to get for my wife, I’d probably buy her a new Virtuoso.  Know what I mean?

2. A Bottle of DoubleShot Cold Brew Concentrate (not available online).  People keep telling me they were out in blah blah blah on the such and such coast and so and so coffee place had some way cool cold coffee in a bottle and they thought it was awesome and whatever.  I’m sure you’re sick of hearing those people go on and on just as much as I am, so you should come down here and get them a bottle of our cold brew coffee concentrate and give it to them and they’ll realize that the greatest cold coffee on the planet is right here in Tulsa, under their nose and they just didn’t look for it.  Take that!  

1. Tchembe.  You knew I was going to say that.  All of that other stuff is great, but Tchembe is only here for a short time and when it’s gone we’ll miss it so much and remember how smooth and delicious it was.  So you should definitely get this for yourself, but while you’re at it, get some for a person who has refined tastes, a foodie, someone you like a lot.  Someone who doesn’t know that coffee can be this good.  Or someone who knows it and appreciates it a lot.

Top 5 Coffee Gifts for Online DoubleShot Customers

5. DoubleShot Proprietary Coffee Travel Kit.  I came up with this setup after traveling to Tanzania, because it’s always hard to pack the necessary gear for making great coffee.  I’ve taken this with me all over the place and I really like it.  The kicker with this whole kit, and what makes it uniquely ours, is that I hand-pour every single plastic connector ring right here at the DoubleShot in the basement where we have the whiskey.  The ring makes the glass jar for the grinder unnecessary because it allows you to screw the grinder onto the bottle, where you brew the coffee.  This kit was recently featured on a website called itstactical.com, where it made the list for 55 gifts fort the adventurer in your life.  Awesome.

4. Coffee Subscription.  6 or 12 shipments of a pound of our freshest coffee either monthly, weekly or bi-weekly.  People don’t want a fruit basket.  They want coffee!

3. Thermos Work Thermos.  Or whatever the heck it’s called.  My dad used to carry one of these bad boys with him to the job every day, and it would roll around on the floor of his van getting beat to hell and I still have it, and it’s awesome.  But the new Thermos that just came in is like the dang stealth bomber of thermoses.  The new color is awesome.  And the DoubleShot logo sits on it just right where you kind of feel like you’re a covert DoubleShot Coffee drinker.  So if you know someone who doesn’t want everyone to know how cool they are, this would be a great gift.  

2. Bonavita Stainless Steel Coffeemaker.  It seems like everyone has an auto-drip coffeemaker at home and most of them suck.  Seriously.  If you bought someone a coffeemaker that actually works right and looks cool, they will probably feel obligated to buy you a bottle of 1978 Glenrothes or something.  And that would be really great.

1. Tchembe.  Just in case you missed it, we’re really all about the coffee.  Super coffee.  Fresh coffee.  And this is the king of coffee.  Buy it, drink it, gift it… buy it intending to gift it and then drink it instead.

One last thing.  We usually only offer USPS Priority Mail as a shipping option, because we like to keep it simple.  But starting right now, up until I leave the store at noon on December 24, you can have your DoubleShot order shipped Express Mail.  Get it there fast so you don’t panic.  Merry Christmas.

This is an official Nekisse update, current as of the date and time of this posting.

Things are really heating up around here.  Much like Kemgin, the Nekisse is not loitering around the DoubleShot.  In fact, we suddenly find ourselves in short supply.  In fact, as of right now, I only have 17 gold 12-ounce bags of Nekisse left and available for sale!  In a vain attempt to be fair to our online customers as well as our local customers, I'm going to put an online limit of 7 bags in the website inventory.  Once they're gone, that's it.  The remaining 10 bags are for sale in-house.

If you have bought the Nekisse, or you're planning on it, you'll want to pay special attention to the suggested food pairings on the label.  The blueberry lemon-drizzle bread is a great breakfast loaf that will pull you in with its citrus notes that play on the fruity tones of Nekisse, bringing our some of that berry flavor as well as the chocolatey sweetness in the coffee.

Our chocolate lava cake recipe is so rich.  With Nekisse, the brightness of the coffee comes in to cleanse your palate between each super chocolate bite with citrus and strawberry flavors.  Here are the recipes.  Hope you enjoy.

Blueberry Lemon-Drizzle Bread

1 1/2 cups (7 1/2 oz./235 g.) plus 1 tsp. all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 cup (4 oz./125 g.) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup (6 oz./185 g.) granulated sugar

1 Tbs. finely grated lemon zest

3 large eggs

1/2 cup (4 fl. oz./125 ml.) whole milk

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 cup (4 oz./125 g.) fresh blueberries

For the syrup:

3 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

3 Tbs. granulated sugar

For the glaze:

1/2 cup (2 oz./60 g.) confectioners’ sugar

3 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350° F (180° C). Butter and flour a 9-by-5-inch (23-by-13-cm.) loaf pan.

In a bowl, sift together the 1 1/2 cups flour, baking powder and salt. In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, granulated sugar and lemon zest on medium-high speed until lightened. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add the milk and vanilla and stir until blended. Add the dry ingredients and stir just until blended. In a small bowl, toss the blueberries with the 1 teaspoon flour. Gently stir into the batter.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Transfer the bread to a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet and let cool in the pan for a few minutes, then turn out onto the rack.

While the bread is baking, make the syrup: In a small saucepan, boil the lemon juice and granulated sugar over medium heat until syrupy, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat. Using a wooden skewer, pierce the sides and bottom of the bread all over. Brush the bread generously with the syrup.

To make the glaze, in a small bowl, stir together the confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice. When the bread is completely cool, drizzle the glaze over the top. Makes 1 large loaf.

Chocolate Lava Cakes (or Molten Chocolate Cakes) - courtesy of my mom

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

8 oz. bittersweet (not unsweetened) chocolate, chopped

½ cup unsalted butter, diced

3 large eggs

3 large egg yolks

Butter and flour 5 custard cups.  Whisk sugar and cornstarch in large bowl to combine.  Melt chocolate and butter in heavy medium saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly.  Cool 10 minutes.  Add sugar mixture to chocolate mixture and whisk until smooth.  Whisk in eggs 1 at a time, then whisk in yolks.  Divide batter between pans.  (Can be prepared 1 day ahead.  Cover and refrigerate.) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Bake cakes until puffed, dry and cracked on top and tester inserted into center comes out with some wet batter attached, about 25 minutes (28 minutes if batter has been chilled).  Cool cakes 10 minutes.  Cut around cakes to loosen.  Turn out onto plates.  Serve cakes warm with whipped crème or ice cream.

I like to drizzle raspberry sauce on the plate before plating.

Keep an eye out for an opportunity to purchase a bit of my personal stash of coffee.  (Tchembe is about to take the stage for the last run up to Christmas.)

My dad* has always been the key influence in my life when it comes to work.  He installs floor covering.  And the man is a workhorse.  I remember when I was a kid, my dad would lift a huge roll of carpet onto his shoulder and walk up stairs.  He seemed to work interminably, sweating, breathing hard, and moving things in ways I couldn’t budge.  Not only that, he makes extremely precise cuts, very rapidly.  He measures in ways I don’t understand, makes calculations in his head, and cuts things upside down and backward, perfectly.  His patterns are uniform and square, and somehow bend around curves.  He wields a carpet knife, with its reversible razor blade, penetrating to the exact depth needed, ripping down a row of yarn, so square that his trimming is minimal and his waste almost nil.  

He has the patience to work on cars.  Completely disassembling and reassembling three in my memory: a Model A Ford, a Model T Ford, and a Falcon Knight Speedster.  These came apart rusted with friction that breaks and busts even calloused knuckles.  But they went back together smooth and lubricated, painted and polished, pinstriped, upholstered, and running like they did off the early 1900s showroom floor.

The man can fix almost anything.  So much so that he took to collecting antiques, some of them relinquished to the junk pile, because he could see the beauty in a worn out, beat up cabinet or dresser.  I grew up using restored antique furniture with names like “hall tree” and “pie safe.”  The patience and precision and vision that he has can transform wood and marble and brass.  And boy can he swing a hammer.

The peak of his antique restoration came in the form of a run-down, dirty, two-story Victorian house with a carriage barn and, once completed, a round brick patio.  Layers of paint and wallpaper and old newspaper came off with sweat and toil, and beneath it all he found the wood that once again brought class and refinement throughout their home.  

His product is meticulous. 

And he drinks a lot of coffee.

Coffee is a curious thing.  Like corn, it’s a huge commodity.  Coffee trees grow and produce fruit, while the farmer toils in the equatorial sun to keep them healthy and productive.  Margins fluctuate but the work is constant.  During harvest, hand picking is followed by milling (sometimes by hand) and drying (oftentimes on patios where people rake the coffee to ensure consistency) and sorting (sometimes performed by women who pick through every coffee bean to remove defects) and bagging (almost always controlled by men who dispense the coffee into a bag and then sew it shut).  And amongst these commodity beans, occasionally an experienced cupper will pull out a specific lot because they recognize that it surpasses the quality and flavor profile of its peers.  But true exceptional coffees are not the result of luck or happenstance, rather the product of concerted effort, focused methodology, and fastidious performance.  People produce high quality coffees on purpose.

I roasted a batch of Nekisse a few days ago and it was one of those roasts where I just knew I nailed it.  It was beautiful.  I set the damper on par to restrict the airflow just right, bringing the temperature of the coffee up at the precise timing I intended.  I felt like the temperature profile of this roast should be recorded on canvas and placed in the Philbrook.  The coffee coalesced at first crack and became one mass of popping, drumming, hip-shaking rhythm to the drone of the roaster purring like a huge metal lion.  And I manipulated the intake and outflow until those precious few seconds arrived at the end of the roast where the coffee and I speak to one another.  

Because I’ve worked with coffee a lot and I care about coffee a lot, something happens between the coffee and me.  There is a personification of the coffee beans.  They become a living entity, the embodiment of all those who toiled on the their behalf.  The coffee is like the star of the show, who couldn’t be where it is if it weren’t for so many people behind the scenes who worked hard to propel it to greatness.  And all those people who had a hand in the coffee come with it to the DoubleShot, from the ones who nurture the coffee trees from seedlings to transplanted mature adults, to those who fertilize and prune and pick and carry the coffee cherry down the mountain.  The people who process the coffee and turn the coffee over on its drying bed.  Those who manage its production and sort out the premium quality beans for us.  The baggers, the shippers, the cargo ship captain who delivered our coffee in port.  They’re all in there with the coffee, because this coffee couldn’t have become what it is without all those people striving on its behalf.  And their spirits cry out in those final moments of the roast and I can feel it.  And they are happy, proud, excited.

The entire life of this coffee has come to this.  All that came before was for this moment in time.  Everything that has happened to this coffee along the way allowed us to fulfill Nekisse’s mission by roasting it properly and delivering it to you for your ultimate enjoyment.  That’s what this coffee was made for.  

And at the moment I dropped that Nekisse from the roasting drum into the oversized stainless cooling bin, all of my life had led to this.  All the hours of roasting and learning and listening and reading and hauling bags of coffee on my shoulder.  All the lessons my dad taught me through his actions about working hard and doing my best, about learning a craft and becoming good at it, about the value of transforming raw materials to make something beautiful.  All of that work by my father carried forward in me, like the work of the coffee producers which carried forward in the Nekisse.  And it all came together for one purpose:  To make delicious coffee.

Nekisse is moving fast.  (get it here:  DoubleShotCoffee.com/nekisse) The response to this coffee has been outstanding, and we love the appreciation you’ve shown to our efforts in providing coffees of this caliber.  With fantastic fruity aromas of strawberry and peach, the brightness of Nekisse glows through in the cup past a sea of milk chocolate that will linger on your palate.

Two more exciting things will happen this Tuesday.  We will prepare two food pairings that accentuate the amazing qualities of Nekisse:  a blueberry-lemon drizzle bread and a chocolate lava cake.  You will have the opportunity to let us make you a pourover of Nekisse and purchase one or both of the food pairings with it.  This is a one-time offering, happening Tuesday, December 10.  

The second thing you need to know about this Tuesday is that we will be releasing a new chocolate bar.  I’ve once again collaborated with the chocolatier who produces our MADURO bars to create a new bar featuring our NEKISSE coffee in a darker chocolate from the Ivory Coast.  It really makes a rich melange of bright, fruity, coffee flavors in that bed of amazing, silky dark chocolate.  A great gift for the holidays and a special treat for you.

Tuesday will be a great day at the DoubleShot.

* If you look around the DoubleShot, most of what you see was made by or restored by or at least inspired by my dad, Steve Franklin.

Well, the holidays are upon us once again.  And as usual, we have pulled out all the stops to bring you some amazing coffees during your holiday celebrations.  This Wednesday night marks the beginning of Hanukkah, and Thursday is Thanksgiving, so right now is the opportune moment to purchase the first of these brilliant coffees. 

Kemgin is a very high-end coffee from Ethiopia that we procured through Ninety Plus, who have brought us so many exquisite coffees throughout the years.  We offered the Kemgin a couple of years ago, and it was a big hit then, so we've brought it back for another go-around.  This is a coffee that has been celebrated by coffee reviewers and professional tasters, as well as winning top coffee at the Good Food Awards.

Because of the region where it is grown, the care with which it is picked, and the clean processing and sorting of Kemgin, it achieves some of the flavors that make coffees stand out as the best coffees in the world.  Aromas of jasmine and lemon lead off, and as you taste the coffee, nuances of black tea and orange excite your palate, with a long, silky finish with highlights of pine.  Perfect for the holiday season.

Because we care about your coffee experiences at home, we came up with two food pairings we think accentuate the coffee in different ways.  Obviously you'll want to drink Kemgin by itself, but having just the right thing to go with it for breakfast and dessert makes the coffee all the more pleasurable.  Follow these recipes for our Cranberry-Orange Muffins and Blackberry Cobbler.

Cranberry Orange Muffins (courtesy of our baker, Kristin Hoffman)

1 orange (including peel), quartered with seeds removed

1/2 Cup orange juice (juice of 1 orange)

1 egg

1/2 Cup butter, melted

1-3/4 Cup all-purpose flour

3/4 Cup white sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 Cup dried or 1 Cup frozen cranberries

Preheat oven to 400ºF and prepare 12 muffin cups with spray or paper liners.  Puree orange quarters and orange juice in a food processor or blender.  Add egg and melted butter to orange puree and blend until smooth.  Sift dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl, then add orange mixture and combine.  Stir in cranberries.  Fill muffin cups with batter.  Bake 20 minutes.

These tend to bring out the black tea flavors in the Kemgin, as well as some soft vanilla flavors that really make this pairing meld together.

Blackberry Cobbler (courtesy of my mom, Millie Franklin)

3 Cups frozen blackberries (do not thaw)

1 large pear, halved, cored, thinly sliced

2/3 Cup sugar

3 T orange juice

2 tsp orange zest

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Gently toss all ingredients together.  Pour into buttered pan.

1 Cup flour

1 Cup sugar

Dash salt

1 Stick butter

Vanilla & Almond extracts (to taste)

Mix sugar, flour, salt, and sugar in food processor with butter until crumbly.  Add vanilla and almond extracts and pulse again.  Pour over fruit and bake 350 degrees until brown and bubbly (45-50 minutes).

The pears in this cobbler really smooth out the acidity in the blackberries, and the whole thing brings out the citrusy aspect of the Kemgin, and the cinnamon really carries forward through the coffee to make for a unified experience.

Both of these recipes are just unbelievably good, and I highly suggest you give them both a try while you have Kemgin in hand.  And it's not going to last long, so buy some today!  

DoubleShotCoffee.com/kemgin

My college football coach, who we called "Big Red", would remind his players on a regular basis, "Every day, you either get better or you get worse; you never stay the same."  I've remembered that through the years, and found it to be true about everything.  Nothing stays the same.  In fact, it's virtually impossible to do something twice in exactly the same way, and it's especially improbable that you'll ever attain exactly the same outcome twice.

In my younger years, I listened to and read a lot of motivational leadership books and speeches, and it's really shaped not only who I am, but the way in which I believe.  Not just what I believe.  But there was a guy named Zig Ziglar, who I used to get a kick out of, and he was full of sayings about this and that.  One of the things I remember him saying, in the course of convincing his listeners to change the way they do things, is that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."  I've since heard other people say this, and I couldn't disagree more.  To me, it's not insanity, but it is lunacy (is there a difference?) to think that you could do the same thing over and over again and get the SAME result.  Things just don't happen like that.  But I do agree with Zig (and so many others) about the idea that you should institute your own change.  Change your mind, change your actions, change your outcomes.  

And that's what we strive to do here at the DoubleShot.  I know we're not going to pull the exact same shot of espresso twice.  I know that we're not going to brew the exact same cup of coffee twice.  I have no doubt that your experiences here are different every single day.  And I'm ok with that.  Since change is inevitable, I feel that it is our duty to try and get BETTER every day.  

With that in mind, we've been working on three different projects in an attempt to brew better coffee. 

When we opened the DoubleShot in 2004, it was very important to me that we have great drip coffee, even though I couldn't afford to invest in a high-end machine.  So we brewed through your standard commercial brewer, and in order to make the coffee taste extra good, we also brewed a french press of the coffee, and added it to the airpot.  (Interestingly, as a side note, I found that most coffee, when dispensed through an airpot, aerates as it comes out and has bubbles on top; but coffee brewed with a french press will not aerate.  You cannot aerate french press coffee for some reason.  Maybe because of the heavy oil concentration.)  The second phase of our coffee brewing came when I finally upgraded to a Fetco brewer.  The brewed coffee was markedly better, and the need to add a french press to the pot was negated.  We suddenly had so much more control over the brewing variables, and a large shower head that saturated the entire bed of coffee grounds in the basket.  For around 8 years we used that brewer, switching about a year ago from 85 ounce airpots to 1 gallon dispensers.  But our volume has actually long outgrown it.  And so it was that last Friday we installed a new, larger Fetco coffee brewer.  With new control and sensitivity, we began to experiment with all the brewing variables, changing the brew time, the water temperature, water volume, coffee grind coarseness and weight, and pre-wet volume and time (This is the period at the beginning of a brew cycle when the Fetco dispenses hot water onto the dry coffee grounds, saturating the bed, and then pausing to let it bloom before commencing with the brew cycle.).  These variables, working in tandem, each change the coffee in some way, and when they are all put together right, the coffee produced can be really good.  And, well, after a lot of trial and some minor palate burn-out, we are currently satisfied with the results.  I know you're going to love the new recipe, so be sure and come by for a cup soon.  (Incidentally, if you'd like to buy our smaller Fetco brewer, it's currently listed for sale on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/sch/franklin527/m.html

The other things we've been working on here at the DS are akin to building a better mouse trap.  As an exercise in creativity and brewing science, I asked all of the baristas to come up with an idea for a new brewing method.  The future of coffee brewing.  How will we be brewing coffee in 5 years?  As you can imagine, the results were interesting and sometimes a bit amusing.  I recorded a podcast about it, which you can hear at aacafe.org.  If you've never listened to our podcast, you should go check it out.  I started it in July 2005, though some of the earlier episodes are no longer available, and you should thank me for that.  Since its inception, the podcast content and format have gone through more changes than the… well, suffice it to say, if you don't like it, just wait til the next episode; it will change.  Mark Brown, former editor at This Land magazine, and author of Argentfork, is my cohost for the podcast.  We talk about coffee, but mostly we talk around coffee.  Take a listen sometime, and pass it on.

Our other mission is concerning how you make coffee at home.  Or on the road.  Over the years, we've worked hard to find the best products for home coffee brewing, and we offer those in the store and on our website.  The baristas are all well-versed in different brewing techniques and are happy to help you figure out what best suits your situation.  Soon we will publish our own manual for various brewing techniques, in a pocket-sized booklet that you'll want to buy and keep handy when making coffee.  

Some of our efforts through the years have resulted in unique products for your home, such as the V60 Filter Crib (check out the new, updated version).  And some have been about making coffee during travel, like the CONNECT3 Adaptor Ring (now available as a complete set!).

But what about making it easier to brew coffee at home without investing a lot of money in equipment?  That's our next assignment.  If you listen to the TED talks, or are part of the "maker" community, you know that things are trending toward simplicity, sometimes through extremely technologically-advanced machines, like 3D printers and the like.  I'm interested in open-source, simple to construct coffee brewing devices.  I'm both interested in something you could print with a 3d printer, as well as something you could adapt from things around your house in order to make a great cup of coffee.  Hopefully someday there will be so many ideas about ways to make coffee that the only reason you could have, no matter where you are, for not making coffee, would be if you didn't have any fresh-roasted DoubleShot Coffee beans.  Stay tuned for these ideas as we develop them over the next few months.

Lastly, I have some good news and some bad news.  The Ethiopia Natural Sidamo Korate is all gone (though watch for the commemorative tshirt).  This coffee has been a huge favorite around here with employees and customers alike.  But this is how things go with coffee.  Out with last year's favorite and in with the new favorite.  Tonight I'll roast the inaugural batch of a new natural Sidamo called Adem Chilcho.  This coffee is different from the Korate, but absolutely delicious.  It's grown in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia, near a town called Dilla.  Three indigenous groups took part in growing this coffee on small plots, and then the coffee was dried in the sun on raised beds before it was cleaned and sorted and made ready for me to roast it.  Read more about it here: http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/products/ethiopia-natural-sidamo-adem-chilcho

And BTW, if you've been trying to come in the wrong door for the past three years, you're in luck; I finally built and installed a sign over the café!